What Is The Best Mattress For Hip And Shoulder Pain?

The Amerisleep Liberty memory foam mattress, made entirely from multiple layers of bio-degradable memory foam, is a rejuvenating, reasonably luxurious sleeping solution designed to provide soft, conforming, pressure relieving comfort.

The Liberty happens to be one of the most eco-friendly mattresses in the industry – the foam is CertiPUR-US certified, with a top cover infused with Celliant – a proprietary material that conserves the heat exuded by your body and reflects it towards you to promote healing and bolster pain relief.

The top memory foam layer (3”) sports an open cell design, yielding both contouring support and decent thermal dissipation. The middle layer (2”) is a bit firmer, and is meant to create a transition in terms of response and support between the comfort and base layers. The bottom layer (7”) offers firm, deep support to ensure optimal spinal alignment.

A standout feature of this mattress is that besides the pain relief offered by multiple memory foam layers, the Celliant fibers reflect your body heat to increase your blood flow, which also alleviates minor aches in your bones and muscles.

That said, the reflected heat also means you’ll be sleeping a little bit warmer than comparable products. Also, since the mattress is wholly memory foam, it offers somewhat reduced edge support. The product comes with a 20 year limited warranty, as well as a 100 nights trial period, an indicator of Amerisleep’s confidence in their product.

The Spindle mattress’s top and middle layers, both 3” deep, have an ILD of 17.5 – 20.5 lbs., ensuring medium firm, springy and conforming support that latex is known for. However, the bottom layer has a significantly higher ILD of 29.5 – 32.5, which provides the firm support needed for properly sustaining the whole weight of your body.

The organic cotton cover, filled with a woolen batting, perfectly complements the overall springy responsiveness of the mattress with a surface that “hugs” you gently without altering the unique feel of latex.

It is also worth noting that Spindle lets you order additional latex comfort layers to customize the feel of your mattress by swapping out the existing layers. Furthermore, the latex conforms to OEKO-Tex standards for not containing any harmful substances that could compromise your health.

The mattress does a good job of preventing motion transfer, so if you sleep with a restless partner, this is again a good choice. In terms of temperature regulation, latex is known for excellent thermal dissipation and correspondingly, the Spindle mattress performs more than adequately (although it isn’t the coolest solution out there).

One snag though: edge support is less than desirable because of the all-latex design of the product. Furthermore, even the latex layer with the highest ILD won’t be able to sustain the weight of an obese person for long (31+ BMI).

All things considered, when operated within its recommended parameters (and the manufacturer is pretty open about the limitations in terms of weight), the Spindle has my vote for the best mattress for side sleepers with hip pain / shoulder pain who prioritize responsivity.

It is backed by a 10 year warranty from the manufacturer, and if you donate it to a charity within a year and send the proof to Spindle, they will refund you the cost less $300.

The top of the mattress consists of organic cotton and all-natural wool, bearing a Greenguard Gold certification. The sheep wool has been tested to be free of pesticides, herbicides and other heavy metal substances by a third party lab. The cover feels comfortable, and the natural wool improves thermal regulation and serves as de facto flame retardant.

The comfort layer underneath is made from OEKO-Tex certified natural Dunlop latex with an ILD of 18-22, resulting in a medium-firm feel that is suitable for a wide range of consumers. It provides immediately responsive, contouring support for your body – but with a touch of firmness (this isn’t the mattress for those like a plush, sinking sensation).

Underneath the latex lies a pocketed coil innerspring support core – the pocketed coil structure consists of hundreds of independent springs that respond differentially to the various pressure points of your body – so the conforming support runs through and through with this mattress, in spite of its firmness.

In the case Natural Escape mattress though, there is an additional subtlety involved: the pocketed spring core is divided into three zones based on the thickness (gauge). The areas that support your shoulders and your thighs have 15.5 gauge springs, whereas the one that supports your lower back and hips (where most of your weight is concentrated), has 14.5 gauge springs.

This enables the mattress to provide you with support where you need it most, which further improves its ability to tailor its profile to your body, thereby alleviating (and preventing) bodily pain caused by a contorted physical posture.

The innerspring structure also ensures ample edge support, and the mattress offers excellent thermal dissipation as well. It comes with a 10 year limited warranty, as well as a 100 day return trial (although this only works for the first purchase per household).

If your weight lies at the higher side of the scale, then a firm mattress is a foregone conclusion for reasons of sustainability – but for individuals dealing with shoulder and back pain, a firm, non-responsive mattress is hardly a remedy. If you’re in this pickle, then you may want to consider the latex / innerspring hybrid that is My Green Mattress Natural Escape.

The mattress combines three distinct layers of materials: a proprietary latex / memory foam blend on top, followed by pocketed microcoils in the intermediate layer, and lastly, a polyfoam / memory foam blend at the bottom, to yield superb responsivity, contouring and deep support.

The interesting thing about the Helix mattress is that you can customize the thickness of these layers based on how you answer an online quiz from the manufacturer that ascertains your sleep preferences covering, among other things, your sleep posture, and troublesome pressure points such as hips and shoulders.

Furthermore, you can and opt for a half-and-half merger of two separate mattresses if you and your partner have vastly different sleep styles – few mattress makers offer this kind of freedom, and at such an affordable price point too.

On the flip side, the product does have somewhat slow heat dissipation, lackluster edge support and minor off gassing issues. Furthermore, the thin cover tends to bunch up after being pressed on, but can be easily straightened up again.

None of these problems are deal breakers though, and if you want to specify exactly how you want your shoulder and back issues to be tackled by your mattress, this is the one for you. The product comes with a 10 year limited warranty, as well as a 100 day free trial.

The Helix mattress is a thoroughly customizable sleeping experience (for one or two individuals) in more than one sense – if you have ever wished to control how your mattress feels, to suit your exact needs, this is worth checking out.

The Ultimate Dreams mattress uses a bamboo knit EuroTop cover on top, which provides optimal softness and breathability. This is followed by a 3 inch layer of Talalay latex, so that the mattress molds itself to your physical structure, and quickly. The base consists of 8 inches of 2 lb./cu.ft. HD polyfoam, which adds crucial overall support for the entire body while also partially improving the bounciness.

The two likeable features of this product are how effectively it provides comfort and support (so much so that multiple users have reported satisfactory pressure point relief), and the fact that it does so while ensuring swift heat dissipation thanks to its breathable design.

The product comes with a 10 – 20 years limited warranty depending on the model, as well as a 90 day trial. You can also choose to customize the firmness at the time of purchase: if you do, you are contacted by a company rep who asks you a bunch of questions. If for some reason, the firmness level you get isn’t satisfactory, you can trade in your purchase for a model with different firmness.

This is a seemingly simplistic latex mattress that packs a lot of value – in terms of both pain relief and more – for its seemingly modest price tag, making it a reasonable consideration for hip / shoulder pain sufferers on a somewhat tight budget.

The Layla is something of a specialty mattress – in that it uses a unique copper infused memory foam comfort layer which, according to the manufacturer, optimizes cooling and promotes pain relief through enhancement of blood flow. For this reason, it is recommended for patients of arthritis, a condition that contributes to hip pain.

What makes it even more special is that it is dual sided: the ‘soft’ side is a 3” copper infused memory foam layer, whereas the ‘firm’ side is a 1” copper infused memory foam layer. In the middle is a 6” convoluted foam layer, with the egg crate formations facing the ‘soft’ side to enhance the sinking, hugging sensation.

The soft side works well for side sleepers because of the greater contouring it offers, while the firm side is recommended for back and stomach sleepers who don’t require that kind of plushness.

The mattress is wrapped in a cooling gel infused cover to promote thermal dissipation – but it appears that only the firm side lives up to the manufacturer’s claims. In fact, the soft side may be too warm if you’re a hot sleeper.

The product comes with a lifetime warranty – which doesn’t cover most cosmetic wear and tear, mind you – as well as a 120 day risk free trial.

Note: While copper has seen widespread use as a folk remedy for bodily aches for ages, recent studies have been unable to substantiate these claims. You may want to take this with a grain of salt.

Recommended for patients of arthritis, a condition that contributes to hip pain.